9 Weeks

We had our first Doctor's appointment when I was about 9 weeks along. My doctor is Dr. Leavitt at Leavitt's Women's Healthcare Center. I was pretty nervous leading up to the appointment. First, I had to wait 5 weeks for it to finally come, and I just wanted to know that everything was ok in there.

But the day finally came! And everything was perfect. We got to see our cute little baby and hear its really fast heartbeat. :) The heartbeat was at 178 and the baby was measuring right on track. It was the coolest thing ever. The ultrasound tech was super nice. We didn't actually meet Dr. Leavitt in that appointment. We met with the P.A. and she was really nice as well, but we should actually meet our doctor at our next appointment, which is February 7th!

Here is a picture of our Little one! :)

Baby Allen!

I found out I was pregnant on December 1st, 2012. I woke up that Saturday morning knowing that Aunt Flow was supposed to make her appearance that day, but I realized that I hadn't had any of my usual symptoms leading up to that day. I usually get really depressed the week before and cramping a couple days prior. But I actually felt pretty good! So I went in the bathroom and took a test! This is how it looked:

I couldn't believe it! It finaly said PREGNANT! Yes, we had been trying for a few months, but I was still expecting it to say Not Pregnant. :) Chris was still asleep in bed, so I went in there, jumped on the bed and told him that I had something to tell him! I then showed him the test and told him I was pregnant. He couldn't believe it at first. And yes, he was still trying to wake up, and pretty sure he was still in shock, so it took him a little bit for it to sink in. Haha

I told Chris that I really wanted us to wait to tell our parents on Christmas Eve, with a cute gift announcing that they were going to be Grandparents. But after the first day of knowing that we were pregnant Chris had already told like 10 people! Don't worry I told a few people the first day too, like my sister Bethany, my BFF Sarah, and Stephanie. We were supposed to go to his parent's for dinner the next night, and I didn't think that he would be able to go through the dinner without telling them. :) After church on Sunday Chris and I had tithing settlement and Chris ended up telling our Bishop I was pregnant too! I then knew there was no way he could keep a secret, and I could also tell that he really was excited about it. So that made me happy, and decided we should tell his parents that night.

We told them as soon as we got to their house, and boy were they excited! There was a lot of screaming and clapping and jumping up and down. :) I was actually glad we told them cause it would have been hard to keep it from them anyway. We can't wait for August to come! And it's so fun cause Sarah is pregnant too! She is 5 weeks ahead of me, due July 7th. We have always wanted to be pregnant together and it's finally happening! Yay!

Christmas

Christmas this year was great! Chris and I went out to Sacramento to spend it with my mom. But the few days before Christmas was spent with Chris's family. His brother and sister both came in town for the holiday so we spent some time with them. The Saturday before we went to lunch at Chuck a Rama with ALL of his family. His grandparents, cousins, parents, siblings, and his awesome wife. :) It was a yummy lunch and it was fun to catch up with family. We then hung out at his parents house playing cards for the rest of the night.

After church on Sunday we went over to the In Laws for a Christmas dinner. We ate lots of yummy food, visited with the fam, and played our favorite card game Progressive Rummy. It was a nice relaxing day, as most Sundays are. :) Chris and I also opened our gifts that his family had for us since we weren't going to be there on Christmas Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Eve (which was Monday), we met Chris's family over at Perkins for a big yummy breakfast! We hardly ever go out for breakfast, and since it is my favorite meal, I was so excited! Their french toast is AMAZING, and it definitely filled me to the brim. We then spent the afternoon at Esther and Jared's house relaxing, napping, and getting ready for our trip!

Chris and I were leaving that night for California! Yay! I was so excited to get to spend Christmas in California with my Mom. It had been many years since I was able to do that. We needed to be at the airport at 5:30pm to head out, so we stopped at Subway to grab some dinner (Some Christmas Eve dinner, eh?) haha, and then got to our apartment to finish packing. The bad thing was that it had started snowing a few hours earlier, and I mean SNOWING!! Tons and tons of snow and it didn't look like it was going to let up anytime soon. I was scared our flight was going to get cancelled. But Chris's mother came and picked us up and took us to the airport. When we checked in we found out that it wasn't cancelled but Delayed till 10pm. Ugh. So we got to spend Christmas Eve in the airport. Waiting.

We read magazines, watched people, and played cards waiting for our plane to arrive. Our plane finally arrived at 10:05pm. We waited for those people to get off the plane, and then we finally got to get on! It had stopped snowing, but had to wait for them to de-ice the plane and do paperwork before we could finally leave, which was 11:15pm!! Holy cow. 5 hours later than it was supposed to. It was a pretty smooth flight and we arrived in Oakland at 12:15am and my Mom and Lee were waiting for us when we got there. By the time we got in the car and drove to Sacramento it was almost 2am. What a long night. We totally crashed as soon as we got to Mom's house, and it felt really good to actually be there out of the crazy weather.

Christmas morning we woke up about 9am with breakfast waiting for us that my mom had made. And then we opened presents. My mom was really good to us giving us gift cards and candy and scarves and socks. We also got some nice things from our family who couldn't be there with us. It was a modest but really nice Christmas. One thing that Chris and I gave to both of our parents was this:

Yep! That's an announcement for exactly what you are thinking, but I will get to that later :) The rest of the day we relaxed, ate lots more food, went to the movies and saw Parental Guidance and then played Rummy for a few hours before going to bed. It was a great Christmas and fun to show Sacramento to Chris since he had never been there before.

The next day we went to the movies AGAIN and saw Les Miserables. It was pretty good. Good music, good actors, but it was kind of long. And LOTS of singing. :) haha We walked around the outlet stores for a bit afterwards, grabbed some Burger King on the way home and hung around the house the rest of the night playing more cards and eating ice cream and brownies. Yummy!
 
Our flight back to Idaho Falls was leaving on Friday, but Chris and I were staying at a hotel down in Oakland the night before so my mom could get back to work on Friday. We wanted to spend a few hours in San Francisco, but by the time we got up and got ready for the day and headed down there, it was pretty late in the day, and we didn't want my mom to have to drive through a bunch of rush hour traffic. So instead we got checked into our hotel, ate lunch at a restaurant across the street from it, and said our goodbyes. The trip went SO FAST!! It was sad to already have to say goodbye and hopefully it wouldn't be too long till we can see her again. Chris and I hung out at our hotel the rest of the night. Went swimming, watched movies, ordered pizza, and ate a bunch of candy we had gotten at the gas station earlier. We love hotels and it was really nice to just relax and be together.

After we got up and ate breakfast the next morning, we got ready to go, and then our hotel drove us to the airport for our flight! We were there a few hours early since our flight wasn't till 3pm and we had to check out of our hotel at Noon. So we ate lunch at the Chili's restaurant there and hung out till we had to board. Chris loves getting to airports hours and hours before we have to board cause he worries that something is going to happen, so he likes to be there super early. So, our flight was on time, and we said goodbye to warm California, and got off in SNOWY Idaho :( It is so cold here!! Boo!! But it was definitely a nice Christmas and I am very grateful we got to make the trip. It was totally worth it. The only bad thing is I didn't take any pictures while I was out there! I need to get better at this picture taking thing. :)

Apartment

Well, it's been 2 months since Chris and I have moved into our new place and I just realized I haven't posted about it! It's pretty exciting :) We lived with Chris's parents for our first year. It helped us pay off a lot of debt that we wouldn't have been able to, and save up for our own place! And after a long time of looking at many different places, praying and trying to figure out where we are supposed to be (for a moment we thought we should move to either Vegas or Boise, but we ended up not feeling good about those places), we found an apartment that we love!
At first we actually didn't want to look in this area cause we wanted to live on the other side of town, but when Chris got the job at the University, we thought it would be a good thing to live next to where he worked since he has to be there so early. And that's how we were led to the Park Place Apartments!

Our friend Melissa lived in these apartments for 4 years and told us that she loved it, so that made our decision more clear. And when we came to look at the building, we knew we wanted to live here. The hard part was trying to decide whether to go with the 1 bedroom, the smaller 2 bedroom, or the big 2 bedroom (which comes with a balcony). :)
We finally decided on the big 2 bedroom! Yay! It has a lot of space, washer and dryer hook ups, dishwasher, and a storage unit. And we are also 2 blocks from the Temple, our church building, and the River! Walking around the river is one of my favorite things to do!
Here are some pictures of our place! :)

This is what you see when you walk into the front door:

Our Dining Room/Kitchen area:

Rest of the Kitchen:

Our cute little bathroom:

Our bedroom:

 

And our spare room (which is a storage room right at the moment. You like the curtains? haha):





And this is our pretty christmas tree that I am super excited about! Our first tree! Target was selling 6' pre-lit trees for $30 on Black Friday and I am so glad we got it! It was difficult trying to decide what kind of decorations I wanted to do, but I love them!

And then I attempted to make my own tree skirt. I found a tutorial for a no sew ruffle skirt, and since I had a bunch of table runners from my wedding that needed to be used up, I decided to try it! It took a lot longer than I thought it was going to take. The girl who did the tutorial said it only took her 5 hours to make, and it took me like 12! I must be super slow or something. But I think it turned out not so bad! :)

Our Sealing

When Chris and I got back from our Cruise, guess what was waiting for us?? OUR CLEARANCE LETTER! We couldn't believe that the process was finally over and we could go to the temple to be sealed. It had been a long process that brought a lot of stress and frustration, but it also helped us grow closer together, and prove our faith, patience and love.
We had thought about waiting till the new year to do it after all the winter weather had gone, but then decided NO WAY! We had been waiting for this for so long, we just wanted to get it done. :) You never know what can happen and we wanted to make sure we were definitely going to be together forever. I called up my family to see when would be good for them to make it and figured out they could be here in 3 weeks, on October 20th! So I scheduled a room at the Rexburg Temple and was super excited.
I was so happy that my sister Bethany, my Mom and Lee, and my bestest friend Sarah could all make it up here. I know that Idaho isn't the most exciting place to visit, but I am so grateful for my family who is always there for me, supporting me. It made me so happy!
Bethany was the first to arrive here. She flew in from Vegas on the 18th and brought her cute little Owey! We got to spend the day together, just the 2 of us while Chris worked. I took her to my salon where we colored, cut, and deep conditioned her hair. We then hung out at my apartment till Chris came home, and then we headed to TEXAS ROADHOUSE! Whoop Whoop! That was Beth's one request while she was here, was to go to Texas Roadhouse :) It's pretty crazy that Vegas doesn't have one of those yet, but I will take any excuse to go there. I love their rolls! We had a great dinner together and filled our stomachs to the brim.
Friday, after Bethany and I got ourselves ready for the day we headed over to the mall to see if I could find a new dress to wear to the temple. After looking in about 5 stores, I didn't find a thing I liked! So I decided that I didn't need to have a new dress, and I would have to wear something I already had. Then of course we needed to go get a cupcake from Cocoa Bean! Mmmm I love that place, and it had been a LONG time since I had been there, so I was definitely excited! We got a mint oreo cupcake and a smore's one and split them so we could try them both. YuuuummmmmY!
I really enjoyed having my sister up here with me. I hate not being able to see my family very often, so it meant a lot to me that she made that trip up here to Idaho. :)
That night Chris's parents were going to come over for dinner, and my Mom, Lee, and Sarah were all supposed to arrive around dinner time as well! So I wanted to have a yummy dinner ready for when they all got there. I decided on doing the homemade Cafe Rio sweet pork to make burrittos with it. My sweet mother-in-law helped me make the pork and the cilantro ranch, while I got the rice and all the other fixings ready for them. :) Everyone arrived at our apartment and it was so fun! Catching up, playing with the babies, and eating delicious food! Bethany and Sarah stayed at our apartment while My Mom and Lee stayed at Esther and Jared's.
When we woke up Saturday morning, Mom and Lee came over and we had a big breakfast together and visited till we needed to head up to Rexburg! I couldn't believe it was finally our day! We had waited so long for this and it made us so happy to be able to be sealed for eternity. :) We arrived at the temple and it was SO WINDY and COLD!!! I was glad it wasn't our actual wedding day cause that would have been miserable. It was such a wonderful sealing and so many people that we love were there to support us. The sealer was really funny too. I feel awful that it's only been like a month since our sealing and I can't even remember most of what he told us! All I know is the spirit was very strong in that room, Chris was super nervous about it, and I just felt so much peace knowing Chris and I could now be together forever. :) After the ceremony, we took a QUICK photo outside the temple of all of our family who were there. I wish we could have taken more pictures, but it was FREEZING!

Then it was time to go to Chuck a Rama! We sure do love that place! Yummy buffet with lots of food to choose from. It was so nice to catch up with our family and see some good friends we hadn't seen in a while. Overall, it was a beautiful day and we appreciate everyone who were there with us! We love you guys!

Day 4 of Cruise/End of Trip

Thursday was our "Day Out at Sea". We were so exhausted from getting up early the past few days, we decided to sleep in a little bit. I ordered room service for breakfast for me since Chris didn't want to eat breakfast so he could have lots of room for lunch. Haha Boy did he love those lunch buffets! :) So I just got some cereal and fruit. When we finally got up for the day we headed to the top of the ship where the Spa/Gym was and sat in the steam room for a little bit. There were a few naked women in my steam room, so I only stayed for like 10 minutes cause that was just awkward! Chris was coming out of his at the same time I was which was funny cause he told me he would be in there for like an hour. :) So we went back to our rooms to get ready for the day and head to lunch! 

 

 

We ate our food outside on the deck. The weather was SO NICE! I really miss that warm sun. It's starting to get so cold here in Idaho! :( After we ate, we were walking by the pool area and they were doing a "Hairy Chest" contest. They had 4 men up on the stage competing who had the hairiest chest. It was one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. Two women had volunteered to be the judges and each man had to take a turn dancing to music, take off their shirt, and let the women feel their chest hair. I don't think I could be a judge. I would just be in shock the whole time. :) They eliminated one guy each round to finally choose a winner. But that was definitely great, cheap entertainment.

We then went to check out the casino. The couple times we have gone to Vegas we each decided to take a few dollars to the quarter machines and see how much we can win. But we only stick to those few dollars and then quit. I usually double my dollar and am happy with that. So, we figured we could take a few dollars and win a few dollars more! Nope. We each had like $5 and we both lost our money in a matter of seconds! So, it looks like the machines on cruises aren't very good ones. Haha

Then we went to the top of the ship and played mini golf! It was super windy and it seemed like everyone chose to play golf right at that time. :) But we got a game in and it was really fun. What was really funny was when we added our scores at the end, we both got the same exact score! Now how often does that happen?? We are just that good. :)

We went back to our room to relax and watch a movie. They had a bunch of movies showing all week including "Men in Black 3", and "Mirror Mirror." After being in our room for a couple hours we both started feeling a little nauseous. We hadn't gotten sea sick all week, but that day we really felt it. I think the mixture between not eating for 6 hours, the smells of cigarette from the casino, being in our room for so long, and the boat rocking a little bit did not add up well! So, we quickly got ready for dinner and headed outside. As soon as we got some fresh air and some food in our stomachs, we felt a lot better. That was the only time we felt sick our whole trip so that wasn't too bad! 

We had decided to not do the formal sit down dinner that night and do the buffet instead. After we ate we headed to the big show room for the last show of the week! We got some strawberry daquiris (virgin of course! :) and found a good seat for the show.

They played music from every decade and had dancing and fancy costumes. They were so good! Those performers were so talented, and could sing and dance so well. The time went by so quick! But it was such a fun show. We decided to spend the rest of the night in the hot tub so we went and got our suits on and headed to the back of the ship.

We met a few nice people out there and ended up chatting with them for like 2 hours! The nice thing about those hot tubs was that they weren't too hot so you could sit in them for a long time and be just fine. We loved it! We then went back to our room and got all of our luggage all organized and ready to leave in the morning. We were so sad it was already over! We kind of wished we had done a week cruise. But it was good to find out if we would like it, and we definitely DID! We had to wake up at 5:30am so we got in bed early cause the morning came quick! (Chris took a picture of me while we were walking back to our room)

Friday morning we got up and gathered all of our belongings and grabbed some breakfast so we could be at our meeting place at 7:15am to start getting off the ship. We had set up a shuttle to the airport with the cruiseline so they let us get off pretty early so we could get to the airport. We were thinking we would have to wait a while to be able to get off, and then go and wait for our shuttle for a while, and finally get to the airport, but we were literally off the ship, on our bus, and at the airport by 8:30am!! Our flight wasn't until 1:30pm, but I definitely would have scheduled an earlier flight if I had known we would be there so early. We even had to wait an hour before checking in. Haha It totally helped Chris's worries of missing our flight. :)

We made it back to Salt Lake where Lauren picked us up and took us to their apartment so we could pick up our car. We wanted to stay the night that night in Salt Lake and drive to Idaho the next day, so we went and checked in our Hampton Inn room and thought about what we wanted to do for the night. We decided to go to IKEA since I had never been there. That place is so cool!! I can now understand why everyone says they can spend all day there, cause I wish I had all day to be there! :) We bought some sheets for our bed and talked about our dream house and everything we would put in it. I loved it. I had gotten a free meal from Tucanos and had also never been there either, and Chris had never been there, so we went to Tucanos for dinner! It was SO YUMMY!! WHY had I never been there before?? I lived in Utah for 5 years and I never went. I am so dumb. Pretty sure every time we go to Salt Lake now we are going to go to Tucanos. :) It was definitely worth the money. 

 We were so full and so tired that we went back to our hotel and crashed. It was time to wake up the next morning and head back to Idaho! What a fun week it was for us. I can't wait to plan our next trip!! :)

Day 3-Ensenada Mexico

Wednesday we woke up in Ensenada Mexico!

We wanted to try the sit down breakfast that day instead of the buffet, and it was delicious! I had yummy waffles and bacon and eggs. :) We signed up to do the La Bufadora Adventure tour at 9am, so as soon as we ate, we headed off the boat.
There was a big flea market that we walked through on our way to our meeting point that we made sure to look at when we got back. We met with our group, and we headed on a bus!

Our tour guide, Irma, was really nice and really funny.

She made sure to tell us the good things to buy at the flea markets, and we learned all about their city on our 45 minute bus ride to the blow hole. When we got there, she led us down to where the blow hole was. We had to walk through the BIG flea market to get down there, and all the shop owners made sure to let us know what they were selling and to stop by on our way back up. :) We made it down to the water and watched it blow way up in the sky. It was so beautiful, and we even got a picture of us right when the water was shooting up. Yay!

 

 

 
We stopped at the restroom before hittin the shops, which you have to pay for! We  had to pay 50 cents each to use the restroom. So you give the man your money, there are piles of toilet paper sitting on the table so choose one and head into the bathroom. There is a lady in the bathroom standing there who hands you a paper towel after you wash your hands. She had a bucket on the sink that said, "Your tips are my salary". That made me so sad! She stands there all day hoping that people will use the bathroom and give her a tip so she can make money. It made me really grateful for what I have here in this country.
 
Well, it was time for us to make our way back up the hill through the flea markets and see if there was anything worth buying! I found some cute earrings made out of pretty shells. Chris looked at some cowboy hats but they seemed to want way more than we wanted to pay. There was a shop that had really pretty bowls that they made and would paint by hand. We got some salt and pepper shakers from that store for our new apartment! We had some friends tell us that we had to buy the vanilla down there, so we bought a big bottle of vanilla for when I bake, and we also brought them back a bottle as well.

That's pretty much all we bought. If we had brought more money, we definitely would have bought more things like a cool hammock, a cowboy hat, taken a picture with a lion, and probably some prescription drugs! Haha not sure what kind of drugs, but they seemed to be proud of their pharmacies down there. :)

We made it back to the bus, but before we got on, we HAD to try their fish tacos! I wanted to at least try a real Mexican taco with homemade tortillas. Mmmm I got a fish taco and Chris got a chicken taco, but they were surely YUMMY! We got on the bus and waited for everyone else to make it back on. We were told to be on the bus at 11:15am, and by 11:30am there was still one couple not back! And we left! They don't mess around! If you dont' get back in time they don't care :) I hope they found a way back somehow! It was a long drive over there!
 
We drove through the town and saw how the people lived there. It was a little depressing to see.

 

 

 

We saw a Mexican Mcdonalds!! That was pretty cool. Chris thought it was so cool how the stop signs said Stop in Spanish. :)

We finally made it back on the boat, got some lunch and then wanted to lay out the rest of the day. It was perfect weather for a tan! They had a part in the back of the ship that was just for adults with tanning chairs and hot tubs, so we got our suits on and headed back there! Chris loved looking at the sea lions at the shore. We had to shoo away seagulls quite a bit. :)

 

Dinner was yummy again like always. But I had eaten so much that day, that before they could even ask us what we wanted for dessert, I had to leave cause my stomach was so full it hurt bad! Right outside the casino, they had a couple of these games where you put a dollar in and you move this key side to side and up and down to where you want it, and then when you let it go you have to see if it fits into this key hole where you could win $100, $200, $500, $500 AND an Ipad, or $1000! We watched people put in 20 dollar bills after another and win nothing. We each tried a few times, but didn't win anything. It always seemed to be just a little off. It seemed pretty impossible to get it right in the hole, but we did see someone finally win $100 after trying like 8 times. That was our entertainment for the night. HAHA We went back to our room and watched a movie till we fell asleep. It was a busy day!